■ South Korea
Executive said to defect
A North Korean living in Hungary and three people believed to be his family have arrived in the South in an apparent rare defection of an official from one of Pyongyang's state-run firms, news reports said yesterday. Most North Korean defectors are ordinary citizens who flee to neighboring China and then seek passage to the South. Only a handful of the elite who work for North Korean firms overseas have ever defected through Europe. The North Korean company official and the others defected in Hungary and were being questioned by Seoul authorities, Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean government official as saying.
■ China
Go vegetarian to avoid flu
Scared about bird flu? Then the only really safe way to protect yourself is to go vegetarian, an animal rights group said on yesterday. Headlining a new Chinese and English-language Web site (www.avianflu.cn) "Avian flu: it's your fault," the group says it is drawing attention to unsavory factory farming practices. The cramming together of thousands of chickens in buildings where the birds are never allowed outside was an ideal breeding ground for disease, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said in a statement. "Avian flu is just one symptom of a very sick and cruel industry," it quoted PETA Asia-Pacific director Jason Baker as saying.
■ AFghanistan
Bombers die in botched blast
Two suicide bombers were killed in Afghanistan yesterday when one of their bombs went off prematurely, a police official said. The pair were killed while walking along a road on the outskirts of the southern city of Kandahar, which has been hit by a wave of violence in recent months, including suicide attacks on foreign troops. "We've established that the two were suicide attackers and were killed prematurely by their own bombs because of some technical fault," provincial police chief Maalik Wayezi told reporters.
■ Australia
No grounds for whaling
A new study shows there is no justification for scientific whaling programs under which thousands of the mammals have been killed in the name of research, Australia's environment minister said yesterday. "[The 10-year research project] demonstrates once and for all, if it needed to be demonstrated, that the so-called scientific programs of the countries like Japan, Norway and Iceland, are a sham," Campbell told reporters. "Japan claims that the major objectives for its scientific whaling programs are to monitor the Antarctic marine ecosystem," Campbell said. That "is precisely the type of data that Australia has now collected" without killing any whales, he added.
■ New Zealand
US blocks Web porn zone
The US has blocked a move to create a ".xxx" Internet address to take the bulk of pornographic sites on the World Wide Web, according to a newspaper report yesterday. ICANN, the international body that manages the Internet, was earlier reported likely to approve the new address, at a meeting that opened on Monday in Wellington. Stuart Lawley, chairman of Canada's ICM Registry, which developed the proposal, was quoted in the Dominion Post as blaming "religious conservatives in the US that appear to have access to the powers that be" for blocking it. Lawley said it was the third time the US had delayed the creation of ".xxx" addresses.
■ Croatia
Crank caller collared
Police arrested a woman who called the local ambulance thousands of times out of "vengeance and for fun," the Zagreb daily Vecernji List reported yesterday. The woman, 34, was seized after calling the medical emergency number in Sibenik, on the central Adriatic coast, more than 200 times in three days. She would hang up each time the call was answered. The latest spate followed another one, late last year, when she dialled the number an unbelievable 10,000 times in a month. She faces legal action over the first round of calling. "They did not help me once when I was unwell, so now I call out of vengeance and for fun," the newspaper quoted the woman as saying.
■ Finland
PM won't sue tabloid
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said on Monday he would not sue a tabloid newspaper that published reports of private text messages he sent to at least one woman. Vanhanen over the weekend said he was considering legal action against tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, citing violation of his privacy. The tabloid reported on the text messages under the headline "Vanhanen Goes Wild," and alleged that Vanhanen sent several messages to a 35-year-old woman who works as a cosmetician. Vanhanen said that after careful consideration including that such a process could drag on for a year or more, he had decided not to take action. "For my part, the matter ends here," Vanhanen said.
■ Germany
Merkel secretly filmed
Federal police are probing the secret filming of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's home by a museum security camera for several years as a major security breach, a government spokesman said on Monday. The mass-market Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported in a front-page story at the weekend that a security camera filming 24 hours a day at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin was often trained on Merkel's private apartment just opposite. The report said the camera had a clear view inside Merkel's living room and had picked up black-and-white images of her husband, chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, watching television.
■ Germany
Freak tornado kills two
A rare tornado wreaked havoc in the northern German city of Hamburg on Monday, tearing the roofs off houses, overturning cars and killing two people, authorities said. The southern district of Harburg was hardest hit by the violent storm, which knocked down three cranes at a construction site, killing two operators.
■ United States
Protesters mar funerals
Flanked by National Guardsmen and veterans of all ages, Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher signed a law to force protesters to keep their distance from military funerals. The measure signed on Monday is aimed at members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, who have been demonstrating around the country at funerals for soldiers killed in Iraq. Carrying signs with slogans such as "God Hates Fags," the protesters claim that US soldiers are dying because God is punishing the US for tolerating homosexuality. Kentucky is one of five states that have enacted such laws, and a number of others are considering legislation. The church has said it will obey such laws though it considers them an infringement of its free-speech rights.
■ Iraq
Doctor confesses to killings
A 27-year-old doctor has confessed to killing more than 40 Iraqi soldiers and policemen in Kirkuk by giving them lethal injections, shutting off their oxygen and failing to stop bleeding caused by combat wounds, officials said. A tape of the confession by Loai Omar al-Taii aired over eight days ending Sunday on Kurdish TV in northern Iraq. Al-Taii was arrested last month with seven other suspected insurgents believed to be operating together in Kirkuk. During police interrogation, he also admitted to treating insurgents at the hospital, according to the broadcasts. More details surrounding the arrest, and whether the confession was coerced, were not immediately available.
■ United States
Stun-gun deaths increase
The number of people who have died after being shocked by police stun guns is growing rapidly, Amnesty International says in a report that catalogs 156 deaths in the past five years. Deaths after the use of Taser stun guns have risen from three in 2001 to 61 last year, the group said. Fourteen have died so far this year, it said, citing police and autopsy reports as well as press accounts. The rise in deaths accompanies a marked increase in the number of law-enforcement agencies employing Tasers. About 1,000 of the US' 18,000 police agencies used Tasers in 2001; more than 7,000 departments had them last year, according to a study by Congress' Government Accountability Office (GAO). Police had used Tasers more than 70,000 times as of last year, the GAO said.
■ Nigeria
Charles Taylor disappears
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, wanted for war crimes by a court in Sierra Leone, has disappeared from his residence in southeastern Nigeria, the presidency said yesterday. Taylor disappeared on Monday night, two days after Nigeria said Liberia was free to take him into custody. Nigeria and Liberia were at odds about where he should go and confusion has reigned about his whereabouts since the Nigerian announcement. Taylor had lived in Nigeria since 2003, when he stepped down as president as part of a deal to end Liberia's 14-year civil war that spilled over into nearby countries. Lobby group Human Rights Watch, which had urged Nigeria to increase security around Taylor to prevent his escape, blamed Nigeria for his disappearance.
■ Norway
Size doesn't matter for win
Jan Petter Johansen won the prizes for both the largest fish and the second-largest fish in a contest on Sunday -- with one fish weighing 2g and the other just 1.3g. But that was enough to win him 6,000 kroner (US$925) since he was the only one among 66 fishermen in the first-ever ice-fishing contest on Vaagvannet to catch any fish. "I almost threw the whole catch away," he was quoted as telling the local daily. `"The stickleback [fish] were tangled in some seaweed I pulled up. Luckily, I noticed the big haul."
■ United States
Andrew Card stands down
After more than five years of service through often turbulent times, White House chief of staff Andrew Card resigned and will be replaced by budget director Josh Bolten, US President George W. Bush announced yesterday. Card's departure comes amid calls -- even within Republican circles -- for Bush to make changes that would revitalize his struggling team. In the Oval Office, Bush said Card had offered and he had accepted his resignation. He is to depart on April 14.
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
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